Breathing Exercises to Quit Smoking: What They Do for Cravings

Slow, controlled breathing lowers the strength of a craving by a small but consistent amount. That is what a 2026 review of the research found. It won't stop cravings arriving and it isn't a quit method on its own. It is free, it takes five minutes, and it gives a craving something to pass through other than a cigarette.

This post is about cravings. If you are looking for exercises to help your lungs after quitting, that is a separate question, and we have covered how lung recovery actually works on its own.

What the research shows

The most complete answer is a systematic review and meta-analysis published in Addiction in 2026 (Roxburgh et al., Addiction, 2026). The team searched eight databases up to November 2025 for studies in which controlled breathing was the main ingredient. That included heart rate variability biofeedback, where a device guides the pace.

Across 12 studies and 696 participants, breathing exercises produced lower craving than the comparison conditions. The effect was small, a standardised difference of 0.30, and it was consistent from study to study. The type of breathing didn't seem to matter: device-guided and plain paced breathing came out about the same on craving.

Two limits are worth stating. The review covered people using alcohol and other drugs as well as nicotine, so the figure is not specific to smoking. And the effect on withdrawal symptoms was uncertain, with results too scattered to say anything firm.

There is one smoking-specific trial worth knowing about. In 2013, researchers randomly assigned 96 smokers who had gone 12 hours without a cigarette either to learn yogic-style breathing exercises or to watch a breathing video (Shahab, Sarkar and West, Psychopharmacology, 2013). Straight after the session, every measure of craving was lower in the breathing group. The trial is thirteen years old and was run in a laboratory, and its authors said themselves that it was still unclear how far the effect carries into daily life.

So the honest summary is a modest, real effect on a craving in the moment. Useful. Not a cure.

Why it might help

The review measured whether breathing helps, not why. What follows is our reasoning rather than its finding.

A craving asks you to do something. Slow breathing gives you a different thing to do, with a clear shape and a clear end, so the craving has company that isn't a cigarette. It also keeps your attention on what is happening rather than on arguing with the urge, and arguing with it is the part that tends to fail. Training people to notice a craving and let it run its course, without acting on it or pushing it away, has trial evidence in daily smokers (Roos et al., Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 2023). Paced breathing is a practical way to do that noticing.

There is a plainer point too. A cigarette is partly a breathing ritual: a slow draw, a long exhale, five minutes outside. Some of what people miss after quitting is the pause, not the smoke. Most of the calm a cigarette seems to bring is something else, but the pause itself is real, and you can keep it.

One to try: four in, six out

This is a simple paced-breathing pattern. It isn't the protocol from either study above. It is simply a slow pattern that is easy to remember.

1. Sit or stand somewhere you can stay for five minutes. Outside is fine, including the spot where you would normally smoke.
2. Breathe in through your nose for a slow count of four.
3. Breathe out for a slow count of six, so the out-breath is longer than the in-breath.
4. Don't hold at the top or the bottom. In for four, out for six.
5. Keep going for five minutes. That is about thirty breaths.

If you feel light-headed, stop and breathe normally. The aim is slow and easy, not deep and forceful.

You don't need to empty your mind, and the craving doesn't need to leave. If it is there the whole time, that is fine. The point is that five minutes pass and nothing follows it.

When to use it

It works best at the moments you already know are coming: after a meal, with the first chai, on the break when everyone else heads down. Deciding beforehand, "if I finish lunch and want one, I do five minutes of breathing first", beats trying to remember it halfway through a craving. Our post on what to do instead of smoking explains why the plan needs to exist before the moment does.

It also pairs well with knowing how long a single craving tends to last. If the wave usually passes in minutes, five minutes of breathing is a way of riding it rather than waiting it out.

What breathing won't do

It won't replace a plan for the first week. The evidence on withdrawal symptoms is uncertain. And it won't repair your lungs. In our view it is one tool for one moment: used at random it is unlikely to carry a quit, and used deliberately at your known trigger points it is a cheap, reasonably evidenced way through them.

Where Nicoxit comes in

Nicoxit's Urge Surfing tool is a five-minute session built for exactly this moment. It gives the craving five minutes with a shape, and nothing following it.

Urge Surfing is one of the tools inside a seven-day course of 31 modules, about forty minutes a day. You keep smoking for the first six days while you map your triggers, so by Day 7 you already know where you will need it. Cigarettes, vapes, hookah and IQOS.

Not medical advice.

References

1. Roxburgh, A. D., Rowland, B., Lubman, D. I., Kaur Bains, S., Pek, M. A., Tso, B., Manning, V., & Arunogiri, S. (2026). Controlled breathing and heart rate variability biofeedback for substance use-related outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Addiction, 121(11), 2959–2971. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70542
2. Shahab, L., Sarkar, B. K., & West, R. (2013). The acute effects of yogic breathing exercises on craving and withdrawal symptoms in abstaining smokers. Psychopharmacology, 225(4), 875–882. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-012-2876-9
3. Roos, C. R., Harp, N. R., Vafaie, N., Gueorguieva, R., Frankforter, T., Carroll, K. M., & Kober, H. (2023). Randomized trial of mindfulness- and reappraisal-based regulation of craving training among daily cigarette smokers. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 37(7), 829–840. https://doi.org/10.1037/adb0000940